Fresh off of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential election, Rudy Giuliani is going to Ukraine, where he will push a foreign power to continue investigations related to former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
President Trump's lawyer told The New York Times on Thursday that while in Kiev, he will encourage Ukrainian prosecutors to continue two investigations of interest to Trump: one that looks at Biden's son Hunter's involvement in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch, and another regarding officials allegedly targeting Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, in order to benefit Hillary Clinton. Manafort, now a disbarred convicted felon, had done extensive work in Ukraine, and the officials deny opening any inquiries in order to assist Clinton.
"We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do," Giuliani told the Times. "There's nothing illegal about it. Somebody could say it's improper. And this isn't foreign policy — I'm asking them to do an investigation that they're doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I'm going to give them reasons why they shouldn't stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government."
The investigations were launched under Ukraine's current president, Petro O. Poroshenko. President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian, will take office June 3, and Giuliani has set up interviews with people close to him in order to figure out if he will continue the probes, the Times reports. Giuliani wants the investigations to both discredit the Mueller report and undermine the cases against Manafort, and told the Times Trump is supporting him on his quest.